The present invention relates to a new and improved method of, and apparatus for, receiving or taking-over products, especially printed products from a revolvingly driven bucket or fan wheel.
Generally speaking, the method and apparatus of the present development for receiving or taking-over printed products from a revolvingly driven bucket or fan wheel, especially of a printing machine, such as a printing press, contemplates the employment of entrainment elements which are moved such that the path of travel or motion of the entrainment elements intersects a transport plane defined by an outfeed conveyor. Before or upstream of the intersection location between the path of travel of the entrainment elements and the transport plane of the outfeed conveyor these entrainment elements are brought into engagement with trailing edges of the printed products as viewed with respect to a predetermined direction of rotation of the bucket or fan wheel.
A prior art apparatus of the aforementioned general type is known, for instance, from the European Published patent application No. 0,067,399, published Dec. 22, 1982 and the cognate U.S. Pat. No. 4,487,408, granted Dec. 11, 1984. With this heretofore known apparatus entrainment elements arranged in pairs at two parallel and synchronously revolving supports travel onto trailing edges of the printed products as soon as the leading edges of such printed products have been released from the pockets of the bucket wheel. These entrainment elements thus align the trailing edges of the printed products at right angles to the direction of conveyance of the outfeed conveyor. However, upon stuffing the printed products into the pockets of the bucket wheel it can happen that such printed products tend to cant. The printed products drop in free fall out of the pockets and are frictionally entrained by the printed products which have already been deposited upon the outfeed conveyor and the belts or bands of such outfeed conveyor. Thus, particularly in the case of canted printed products, it is possible that a leading product corner will be engaged by lift-out belts or bands before the entrainment elements have acted in a product aligning fashion upon the trailing edges of the canted printed products. Additionally, printed products along their free path of fall between the bucket wheel and the outfeed conveyor and the supports of the entrainment elements can be uncontrollably acted upon by the air currents of the bucket wheel or by fluttering of the trailing product edges. This can have the undesirable result that the mutual spacing or pitch between the individual printed products in the outfed imbricated or shingled formation of printed products becomes irregular and that individual printed products are arranged in a canted disposition within the imbricated formation of printed products.
Also changes in the rotational velocity of the bucket wheel, in particular, can result in phase shifts, the consequence of which is that there arise irregular or non-uniform mutual spacing or pitch between the printed products.